I want to tell you about a flintlock musket.
It’s probably the third crudest weapon every manufactured by human hands, and was the dominant weapon of all armies up until about a 160 years ago. Technologically, it’s right above spears and bows. It’s a long metal tube set into a carved piece of wood. There’s no “action” to speak of – a flintlock musket is basically a handheld, small-caliber cannon with no “light fuse and point at enemy” instructions written on the side.
To operate, you pour an amount of blackpowder down the barrel. This isn’t the gunpowder we know today – this stuff is barely a step above the elements its composed from, it stinks, and it smokes so bad a company of rifleman can obscure their battlefield completely. Next, a smooth, round lead ball was inserted down the barrel, usually wrapped in paper or cloth. This was packed into the powder with a long metal rod.
Now we’re ready to fire. More powder is poured in the flashpan, a chamber directly behind the user-end of the barrel. The springloaded hammer is withdrawn to full-cock. Put it up to your shoulder. Look down the rudimentary sights. This weapon is good out to 300 yards.But it’s still just a handheld cannon. Not much more sophisticated than a bottlerocket in a pipe.When you pull the trigger, the hammer is released. Flint on the tip hits the metal striker surface immediately above the flashpan. With some luck, this will trigger an open-air explosion a few inches from your face, igniting the powder inside the barrel and propelling the ball outwards.
With luck. The initial explosion may not ignite the powder. The flint may not reliably spark. Usually it does, but sometimes…You can fire a flintlock musket maybe twice inside of a minute thirty. Less if someone’s shooting at you and your adrenal gland is dumping flight-or-fight into your bloodstream, making your hands shake and your mouth taste like vomit.
Because if one of those balls hits you…the musket is a primitive arm to be sure, but the damage it can inflict is nothing if not drastic. A ball of lead, between .4 and .6 inches wide can tear a hole in a human just as fast as a modern bullet, slamming through muscle, shattering bone, tearing skin. The treatments for gunshot wounds existing at the time of the modern musket were painful and just barely above the level of drilling the head for spirits. Gunshot wounds were almost always fatal. They were always crippling, and always excruciatingly painful.
Did I mention there were very few drugs for pain, and anesthesia was a bottle of booze and a knock upside the head?
Now, I want you to imagine that the two of us are sitting in Buckman’s Tavern. It’s early in the morning. We’ve been up a long time, discussing the coming British attack. General Gage has given Lt. Colonel Francis Smith the order to come and destroy the stockpile of muskets, powder, shot, and cannon that we have been training to use to defend our town and homes. The tavern is lit by candle and fireplace, but the sun is just coming up. We were warned at one in the morning, and we’ve been up all night. Discussing what we should do, what we will do, what we want to do. Where we want to be, which is anywhere but here.
Shortly after sunrise, we can hear shouts, and feet, and the musical instruments the British use to keep their soldiers in step.There are nearly a thousand British soldiers. Inside Buckman’s Tavern, there are less than 80 of us. The British possess the sheer, overwhelming numbers and firepower to blow more than ten holes in each one of us, at once.
No pain medication. No anesthetic. No blood transfusions. No antibiotics. Amputations are done with a hacksaw and a belt.
All they want is our cannon and our guns. Simple tubes of metal set into wood.
What would you do?
History says that we rose, picked up our rifles, and walked out into the cold dawn air, as the sun was just lighting up the village green. Can you hear your heart hammering in your ears as we assemble on that green? Each thud of it could be the last. Each of us could die today. We’re counting on the fact that the British will not open fire on us, because we have no possible means of resisting successfully. If possessed of the will, they will kill us here, and we will be less than a bump in the road to them.
Our captain, John Parker, shouts: "Stand your ground; don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."
A few minutes later, we’re looking down the barrels of the British guns. Those holes are less than an inch wide, but they seem to be the size of melons. They’re dark, and each one of them can burst into flame at any point, and reduce your life to blood and screaming and pain.
Major Pitcairn rides forward and yells “Disperse, you rebels; damn you, throw down your arms and disperse!"
What would you do?
You are less than 80 men, facing nearly a thousand. The last time two forces of a similar size faced each other in epic battle, 300 Spartans and 7000 freed slaves were facing down a force of Persians between 250,000 and a million men strong at a small valley called Thermopylae.There must be something about those odds that inspires extraordinary courage, because our answer is the same as theirs.
No.
We don’t know who fired first. But all of a sudden, the world is reduced to pulling that trigger, fumbling to reload, firing again, sunlight is blocked by thick clouds of smoke, the crisp morning air is filled with the stench of violence and death, and you know for absolute certain that the entire world is trying to stop the beating of your heart, to shut down your sight and your mind and your world like flipping a switch.
232 years ago, 80 civilians lived that. They faced a force ten times larger than themselves, faced death, and pain, and disability, and said what 86 years later, their descendants would say as domestic soldiers, their countrymen opened fire on them. They said what a handful of Jews said 186 years later, as foreign troops marched into the ghetto they had been forced into and began rounding them up for extermination. They said what 218 years later, their descendants would say as domestic soldiers, their countrymen set their church on fire and machine-gunned anyone escaping from the blaze.
No.
Our lives are our own.
We will determine the course of our own destiny, not you.
We will resist you with our hands and our hearts and our minds and our breaths, and our lives, and if necessary our deaths.
We are free.
No.
You cannot do to us whatever you want.
We are free.
And we would rather die than be anything else.
Would you put that primitive cannon to your shoulder as soldiers marched into Lexington Green? Would you throw a brick at a soldier marching down your street in Baltimore? Would you sight down the barrel of a small, unfamiliar pistol and open fire as soldiers marched into Muranowski Square? Would you heft an AK-47 and open fire as soldiers cut down your family and friends and your home burned around your ears?
Would you? Would I? Would any of us?
Throughout history, on this day, men and women have done just that. They’ve held in their untrained, civilian hands primitive and unsuitable weapons, stared down the guns of better armed and trained soldiers – more often than not their countrymen – and said –
No.
We are free.
And we would rather die than be anything else.
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Militias are defined as civilian soldiers, or all able-bodied civilians capable of bearing weapons in defense of their nation, state, city, or family.
The Virginians standing before the guns of the British military were a militia.
The Southerners standing before the guns of the Northern military were a militia.
The Jews standing before the guns of the Nazi military were a militia.
The Branch Davidians standing before the guns of the American military were a militia.
They were Patriots.
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